This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Batchelor.

I welcome Gregory Zuckerman.

He is the author of the new book about the vaccine so far,

A Shot to Save the World,

the inside story of the life or death race for a COVID-19 vaccine.

Gregory, congratulations, and a very good evening to you, and thank you for this.

I take you to a dramatic moment in your book.

It is January 2020.

Chinese researcher, Zhang, headquartered at Fudan University in Shanghai, his lab is there,

has received what he needs to map out the genome of what he suspects is a new version of SARS

or something odd that's been reported from Wuhan, the 11 million populated

city in the middle of China that is experiencing strange afflictions. He gets the material he

needs to map the genome and he calls his colleague Eddie Holmes inmes in australia what does he tell him good

evening to you gregory good evening and great to you back here and yeah you've kind of pinpointed

what i what i think is an overlooked um and very dramatic episode that was a turning point in in history

frankly so this scientist, as you mentioned,

in China, Zhang, a 58-year-old infectious disease expert, he basically maps the genome of this new

and really troubling and even scary virus. They're not sure what it is yet, but it seems like SARS,

and it seems more dangerous than the first SARS. If you recall that one, did kill some people.

It was lethal, but eventually petered out, partly because or largely because we could identify

who had been infected. And what the scientist, Zhang, gets scared about is that there are

...